10-Year-Old Immigrant Who Was Detained After Surgery Is Released

A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been released from immigration custody in Texas, her lawyers said Friday, 11 days after the Border Patrol stopped the ambulance she was riding in on her way to emergency gallbladder surgery.

The girl, Rosa Maria Hernandez, had been held in a facility for migrant children since last week as she recovered from surgery, not quite aware that her case was inflaming the national debate over illegal immigration, that a phalanx of lawyers was suing over her detention or that figures including members of Congress and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical “Hamilton,” were calling for her release.

Those working on her behalf appeared to win a partial victory on Friday afternoon, when she left the facility in San Antonio about 4:30 p.m. and was taken back to her family in Laredo, though she still faces the possibility of deportation.

“We’re just thrilled — it’s such a relief,” said one of her lawyers, Michael Tan, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s actually quite overwhelming. This was the first time in her life she was separated from her family.”

Of the next step in her case, he added, “There’s really no reason to be targeting Rosa Maria for deportation,” given her age and condition.

Her parents brought her across the border illegally from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 2007, when she was 3 months old, seeking better access to medical treatment for her cerebral palsy. Those hopes were realized: A government program for children with special needs has been covering her therapies, a fact that supporters of tougher immigration enforcement have seized on as evidence for the argument that unauthorized immigrants are a drain on resources.

Rosa Maria’s release follows days of public pressure and an A.C.L.U. lawsuit. The government had argued that the girl should be treated as an unaccompanied minor, like the other occupants of the facility where she was held, most of whom have come to the United States alone from Central America. Unaccompanied minors are generally released to family members already living in the United States while their deportation cases travel through the immigration courts.

Her lawyers, however, had argued that it was unnecessary to follow the family reunification process, which involves background checks and other steps, given that her parents lived just 150 miles away in Laredo.

“Finally, Rosa Maria has been released to her family where she belongs,” Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who represents the San Antonio area, said in a statement on Friday evening. “This young girl and her loved ones have been through a traumatizing ordeal.”

He added: “The United States should not be a place where children seeking life-sustaining medical care are at risk of apprehension.”

Rosa Maria was first taken into immigration custody last week, after an ambulance carrying her to a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi for emergency gallbladder surgery was stopped at one of the Border Patrol checkpoints north of the border. When Border Patrol agents discovered that she did not have legal status, they followed the ambulance to the hospital, stood guard outside her hospital room and turned her over to immigration custody after her release.

The federal Health Department, which oversaw Rosa Maria’s placement in the juvenile facility, said Friday that it could not comment on her case because of privacy rules.

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that includes the Border Patrol, has said that the agents were legally obligated to detain her in part because she was not traveling with a parent or legal guardian. Though some immigrant advocates questioned whether the agency had violated its policy against arresting immigrants at hospitals, a spokesman said that the agents had taken her into custody at the checkpoint, before she arrived at the hospital.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Migrant, 10, Is Released, And Rejoins Her Family. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe